Shadowing Practice: Why I Love Writing by Hand (And Hate Computers) - Learn English Speaking with Video

I've been trying to write a book lately and I've been using my laptop to do it, but I've run into a bit of a problem.

The words just don't seem to be flowing, and I'm just struggling more than I really ever have.

So I decided that I was going to try something different, something new, or really something kind of old.

I am going to write the first draft of this book, and maybe the second draft or the third draft, by hand, using a pencil and a notebook.

Our laptops or our computers, they are our defaults.

They are the things that we choose when we're not even thinking.

And I think if we want to be intentional about how we live, including how we write, but also how we read or how we study or how we spend our recreation time,

any of that, we can't just let technology be a default.

One of my favorite living writers is Wendell Berry.

He's a poet, he's an essayist, and a novelist.

He's also a farmer who lives in Kentucky.

I highly recommend this volume, The World Ending Fire.

It's a collection of his essays.

I think every essay in this is quite good.

The essay I want to talk about is from the late 80s, and it's called Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.

In it, Berry explains why he continues to write all of his essays, his novels, his poetry, using a simple pencil and paper.

And Berry is clearly my inspiration in what I'm doing right now.

Barry argues that simply put, there aren't that many advantages to a computer and using a pencil

or a pen and paper has been good enough for the greatest novelist, the greatest essayist, the greatest poets who have ever lived.

The essay is very short and I highly recommend that you read it, but if you wanted the summary of it, well you could look to the end of it where Barry gives nine rules for choosing whether

or not you're going to adopt a new piece of technology.

He writes that the new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.

It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.

It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

If possible, it should use some form of solar energy as of that of the body.

It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.

It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

It should come from a small privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.

It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists.

And this includes family and community relations.

If we were following Wendell Berry's rules, we would all throw away our computers right away.

And it would be unrealistic to say that that's what we ought to do.

So even if it's maybe a little too late for us to decide whether or not we're going to buy computers,

we could be thinking about how we choose to incorporate those pieces of technology into our lives.

So let's look at that last rule, that a new piece of technology should not disrupt something that already exists that is good.

It's not just that a pencil and paper are perfectly fine for writing.

What I realized, I think, is that actually trying to write on your computer is disruptive, and it's disruptive of the actual act of writing.

And there's a couple of ways we can explain that.

One is I actually think

that I am capable of typing faster than I'm capable of writing

and it seems that the ability at

which I can write on a page is pretty much the exact pace

that I need if I want to write half decent prose.

If I'm typing it just comes out way too fast.

Also when you're on a laptop you have this kind of tendency to want to edit as you go

because you can just go back and delete something.

You can copy and paste.

You can look at spell check or check your grammar

and yet I found that when I want to write well like when I was writing my dissertation, I really had to put a gap between what I was doing in the writing phase,

where I just needed to get my ideas out on the page, and what I was doing in the editing phase.

And I needed to actually put time in between there.

And I admit that some of my preference for writing by hand might be driven by a kind of romanticism.

I like the image of sitting at the coffee shop, sipping on your coffee, writing slowly, thinking about the world.

But I do think that there are these practical benefits.

I think it can actually help you with your writing since I switched over to writing by hand I found

that the words are just kind of pouring out of me in a way

that they weren't

when I was trying to type the book it's just much easier for me to produce

and to get those ideas out

when I was typing my book on my laptop I was just floundering

but there's another connection and for that I think we should talk a little bit about the poet Rilke.

Rilke wrote these famous letters called letters to a young poet it's a collection of letters.

He wrote 10 letters to a younger poet, often giving him advice about art and also about spirituality.

And one of the key takeaways in Rilke's letters is that a poet or a writer, or just I would say a thoughtful intellectual person, needs a kind of solitude.

Rilke writes it like this, what is necessary after all is only this solitude, vast inner solitude, to walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours.

That is what you must be able to attain.

Now, that is a discipline.

It's something we actually have to cultivate.

We have to learn to be okay with solitude and we have to learn to be comfortable there.

But we also need to set up our exterior conditions so that we're able to enter into that place of solitude.

You have to be incredibly disciplined to not be distracted by all the things that your laptop offers.

You could always check your email.

You could always check your analytics if you're like me.

You could always check YouTube.

And there are ways around that, and you can block sites and things like that.

I figured that actually the easiest thing to do was to just cut it off at its source, and it was to stop using the laptop for my writing anyways.

Now, none of this actually should stop with writing.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I should just put the laptop away, put the phone away too, as much as I can.

I've actually now designated a place in my apartment where I will keep my laptop

and phone during the day so that if I don't need it, I'm not around it.

And that way I can focus on the things that really matter to me.

Now I can kind of hear this criticism.

I can hear people saying, well, you're going to have to use a computer anyways if you're writing a book.

eventually you're going to have to type it up

and you're going to have to edit it

and you're going to have to send it to an agent or a publishing house or something.

You can't just send them a notebook.

And you're absolutely right.

My position is not that we should just get rid of computers completely.

I think we already are in a little too deep.

We have computers and we should use them as best we can.

When I've written my first draft, my second draft, when I feel comfortable with the finished product, I'll type up the whole thing.

That will actually probably be a useful process for me because it'll give me a final chance to edit it.

I'll be able to see it in a different context, see it on the screen, typed out in something that isn't just my own handwriting.

Maybe you could make an argument that ultimately it is more efficient to just learn, to be disciplined, and to type.

But I would suggest that instead we should look at solutions to problems that just involve opting out of the problem itself.

So if your laptop is distracting you and it's making it difficult to write, you can just put it away and you can find another way to write.

Thank you.

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Este vídeo tiene 99 frases y 1503 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 7:08. El hablante habla rápido, unas 211 palabras por minuto, así que espera sonidos enlazados y reducidos. El 83 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
laptop sustantivo	/ˈlæp.tɑp/	portátil, computador portátil
poet sustantivo	/ˈpoʊ.ət/	poeta, poetisa
essay sustantivo	/ˈɛs.eɪ/	ensayo, redacción
edit verbo	/ˈɛdɪt/	editar
pencil sustantivo	/ˈpɛnsəl/	lápiz
discipline sustantivo	/ˈdɪsəplɪn/	disciplina
default sustantivo	/dɪˈfɔlt/	mora, default
notebook sustantivo	/ˈnoʊtˌbʊk/	cuaderno, libreta
distract verbo	/dɪˈstɹækt/	distraer, despistar
novelist sustantivo	/ˈnɑvəlɪst/	novelista
disrupt verbo	/dɪsˈɹʌpt/	trastornar, trastrocar
vast adjetivo	/væst/	vasto, enorme
practical adjetivo	/ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/	práctico
argue verbo	/ˈɑɹ.ɡju/	argüir, argumentar
efficient adjetivo	/ɪˈfɪʃənt/	eficiente, eficaz

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
come out verbo	/ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/	revelarse, salir a la luz
throw away verbo		tirar, echar

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 32 contracciones y formas reducidas, como you're, I'm, I've. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, relation /ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/, publish /ˈpʌblɪʃ/, recreation /ɹiːkɹiˈeɪʃən/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: ordinary /ˈɔɹdɪnɛɹi/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, intellectual /ˌɪntəˈlɛkt͡ʃʊəl/, recreation /ɹiːkɹiˈeɪʃən/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como laptop, poet, essay.

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	I've run · has been · I've actually now designated
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	might be driven · be distracted · be disciplined

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

Shadowing Practice: Why I Love Writing by Hand (And Hate Computers) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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